Édouard Manet. Olympia (1863)

Olympia

Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting

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Olympia (1863), Édouard Manet
Oil on canvas. 130.5 cm x 190 cm
Musée d’Orsay. Paris, France

For centuries in the history of painting, seeing a female nude was not unusual. But this is not just another nude. Édouard Manet shocked the world with his Olympia, a work that for many is one of the first windows into modern painting (along with his Luncheon on the Grass, from the same year).

Nudes used to be reserved for mythological or religious scenes, already known stories. But in this work, Manet places as the protagonist a real, contemporary, nude woman, who looks provocatively and whom no one knows at first.

Then we find symbols that reflect the model’s profession as a prostitute: the flowers brought to her by her maid (a tradition in the client-prostitute relationship of the time), the unmade bed, the closed room, the bracelet, the ribbon around her neck, being completely naked with pearls around her neck, and an orchid in her hair (a flower considered to have aphrodisiac properties, so it is used as a symbol of sexuality).

A painting of a common prostitute. Scandal. Let’s remember that societies in general and their prominent figures in particular love to be scandalized in public for what they love to do in private.

But the most important thing is that the protagonist poses in a defiant attitude, with no hint of shame, receiving her next client: the viewer of the painting.
Even the cat’s pose, hunched over and alert, tells us that someone else is already in the room.

Olympia has become one of the icons of contemporary art. It makes the viewers part of the work; it challenges, provokes, and makes them question their own morals.

Artists are no longer skillful “imitators” of nature, and instead they start provoking from their vision of the world and their direct experience. And spectators are no longer simple spectators.

Recommended links:

Salon des Refusés of 1863.

When does Modern Art Start?

The Touch of Édouard Manet.

The First Impressionist Exhibition (1874).

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